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Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

daily.co

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Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#61

Post by benreesman »

humanrebar wrote: post #55
rr808 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you worked successfully on an optimizing compiler all day, anything that an MBA teaches is borderline boring. Optimizing compiler is a great example of a niche that a few guys should be in that really shouldn't be paid well. The big bucks earned at Google/FB aren't earned because they have better compilers or low level libraries, its because of the business strategies they have.

On the other hand, increasing performance by 0.5% at their scale is big savings. Certain kinds of optimizations can save over 10% in runtime performance, easily. That means less compute, less engineering time spent optimizing with other approaches, snappier performance compared to the competition, and so on. Yeah, pay the "business" person better who decided, wisely, to fund these kinds of projects. But in my experie…

1% on HHVM is a number I can’t say more about than no one would believe it.

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#62

Post by aiisjustanif »

rr808 wrote: post #46
parkingrift wrote: post #18

Strong disagree with basing salary on years of experience. I see almost no correlation between output, skill, and years of experience. I actually consider this an anti-pattern that actively encourages coasting.

As someone with 20+ yoe this is true, I'm probably as good as a guy with 5 yoe and honestly I want to apply for jobs like that. Honestly tech has changed so much I'm skeptical anyone really has 20 years experience now. Its hard though when people see my work history they only let me interview for very senior roles which I usually aren't good enough to do.

I’d like advice on how to tackle this as well.

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#63

Post by lkxijlewlf »

parkingrift wrote: post #18

Strong disagree with basing salary on years of experience. I see almost no correlation between output, skill, and years of experience. I actually consider this an anti-pattern that actively encourages coasting.

They address this in the article by saying it is "relevant" experience. They've given themselves some wiggle room there and I'm assuming they will trust their hiring practices to make sure they don't hire someone with 10 1 year experiences.

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#64

Post by benreesman »

cindarin wrote: post #56
benreesman wrote: post #42

This is sort of well-articulated and someone thought about it a lot. The salaries seem fine, as long as there’s 1MM in liquid equity to go with the L7 one like Google does. But it doesn’t seem to address the real issue (to which I also don’t have a final answer): the jock/nerd thing is still playing out. If, as I believe is mostly true, A16 is pretty on the money with the software eats the world thing: hackers “shoul…

You may be right about many things you said, but this comes off as though you've got a complex about something.

I’ll extend you the benefit of the doubt and assume your intention is to be helpful.

Can you be a little more specific and thus potentially actionable?

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#66

Post by sockpuppet69 »

jawns wrote: post #35

My career path was 10 years in journalism, during which I was also programming as part of my responsibilities, and now 11 years in full-time software development. Under Daily's levels system, I'd have 11 years of "direct" experience and 5 years of "indirect" experience, for a total of 16 years of experience, putting me in their highest band (Level 7) with a salary of $270K. But as I've told every employer who's hired…

No post body was provided.

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#67

Post by humanrebar »

benreesman wrote: post #42

This is sort of well-articulated and someone thought about it a lot. The salaries seem fine, as long as there’s 1MM in liquid equity to go with the L7 one like Google does. But it doesn’t seem to address the real issue (to which I also don’t have a final answer): the jock/nerd thing is still playing out. If, as I believe is mostly true, A16 is pretty on the money with the software eats the world thing: hackers “shoul…

> COVID/WFH only turbocharges this: tall white guys have way less edge over Zoom.

Being tall probably matters less, sure.

I do find that ability to communicate in writing with English-speaking audiences is much more important than it used to be. Technical communication and persuasion that used to happen in hallways and on whiteboards is now happening in discussion threads, written code reviews, design papers, etc. In some cases, I expect people that some people that used to struggle now benefit from the ability to communicate more deliberately or without a verbal accent.

I don't know that white versus non-white maps to excellent writing skills as such. Partly because I'm never sure what folks mean by "white" in these contexts.

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#68

Post by sockpuppet69 »

humanrebar wrote: post #45

> Not being able to pay enough for great candidates is a common problem for startups, and we’ve already had to accept that some very strong potential teammates won’t even consider us, given enormous salaries at established tech companies. But by doing the legwork to make sure we’re competitive within our cohort, we believe we’ll have enough great candidates who want to work at a company of our stage and size. Recruit…

No post body was provided.

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#69

Post by woadwarrior01 »

angarg12 wrote: post #50

I worked for a very old fashioned company in Germany that used a similar system to pay employees. After about a year I became the lead of my team. But since some of my colleagues had been in the company about 10 years, they were getting paid more than me. Frustrated, I left for a better (and better paying) job. I believe these systems produce a "dead sea effect". High performer will leave, being able to get better de…

Interesting! I didn't know this phenomenon had a name. I've seen the "dead sea effect" at a well known SV bigtech co as well. And this company has biannual performance review rituals.

Re: Rethinking Levels, Promotions and Salaries

#70

Post by benreesman »

cindarin wrote: post #56
benreesman wrote: post #42

This is sort of well-articulated and someone thought about it a lot. The salaries seem fine, as long as there’s 1MM in liquid equity to go with the L7 one like Google does. But it doesn’t seem to address the real issue (to which I also don’t have a final answer): the jock/nerd thing is still playing out. If, as I believe is mostly true, A16 is pretty on the money with the software eats the world thing: hackers “shoul…

You may be right about many things you said, but this comes off as though you've got a complex about something.

I mean, I’m a little edgy about a fairly recent bereavement, but if that’s filtering into my opinions about comp structure then I’m probably pretty bad at my job, and therefore my opinions will trend towards utter irrelevance.
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